


Eshajōri

by signifying_nothing



Series: Words of Devotion [5]
Category: A.C.E (Beat Interactive Band), ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Full Feelings Nasty, Gen, Immortals, M/M, Temporary Character Death, Vampires, Violence, discussion of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:54:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25940947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/signifying_nothing/pseuds/signifying_nothing
Summary: Byeongkwan knows, the second they hit New Orleans, that something is wrong.(byeongkwan and sehyoon reach new orleans.)
Relationships: Kim Byeongkwan/Kim Sehyoon | Wow
Series: Words of Devotion [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1790611
Comments: 7
Kudos: 42





	Eshajōri

**Author's Note:**

> 会者定離; えしゃじょうり; Eshajōri: Japanese  
> those who meet, must part.
> 
> the rest of this series is required reading if you want to understand what the heckity heck is going on in here!

Byeongkwan knows, the second they hit New Orleans, that something is wrong.

Sehyoon is visibly uncomfortable. He shifts back and forth in the back seat, untouched by the sun but still anxious about it. Even more anxious than he usually is.

“What's wrong,” Byeongkwan asks, even as he checks the GPS to make sure they're heading in the right direction. It scares him that Sehyoon will have to stay in the car, will have to be trapped in here while Byeongkwan goes inside, but it's probably for the best. Vamps aren't anyone's favorite, not even witches.

“Something's... Weird,” Sehyoon says, squirming. “It... It feels weird. It just feels weird. Are we almost there?”

“Yeah,” Byeongkwan reaches back with his right hand and drives with his left. Fuck. Sehyoon is cold. Cold and clammy and now that Byeongkwan is really looking he is shaking. With hunger, with anxiety? He has no idea.

“Yeah, we're almost there.”

The store itself is fairly innocuous, typical for a witch trying to blend in. Some appropriately witchy name spelled out in a cauldron on a sign hanging from a pole, swinging back and forth. Byeongkwan is uneasy. He hates this feeling, he always does. The moment right before shit hits the fan. Not that shit is going to hit the fan, but that's the feeling he gets anyway.

“Get in the back back seat,” he says, keeping his eyes on the building as he unbuckles his seatbelt. “Stay down. Something's fucked up. I'll be back fast.”

“Byeo—”

“Stay _down,_ Yoonie,” Byeongkwan hisses, checking his weaponry. “Just—I'm the expert here, okay, please. Stay down. I'll either be right back, or I'm gonna come running out of there like hounds are on my ass and either way I need you to stay safe back there.”

Sehyoon doesn't like it. He scrunches his face and bares his teeth but he moves to do as Beyongkwan tells him, thank god. Byeongkwan catches his hand, kisses the top of it.

“It's gonna be fine,” he promises. He can see that Sehyoon doesn't believe him. He looks like that every time Byeongkwan goes somewhere without him, like if Byeongkwan is alone he is helpless, which isn't true at all. But he _is_ mortal. They don't have all the time in the world; Sehyoon, Byeongkwan knows, is painfully aware of his helplessness against the unforgiving movement of time. He sometimes whispers to himself about it, when he thinks Byeongkwan can't hear him, or that he's too close to sleep to hear. It's heartbreaking, really.

But Byeongkwan is here to make sure that Lee Hongbin is all right, so he lets go of Sehyoon—who tries to linger—and moves toward the door. Byeongkwan hadn't been expecting it to open, if he's honest, much less for the door to swing open easily. Byeongkwan certainly hadn't been expecting for someone to grab him by the front of his leathers as soon as he stepped in, yanking him to one side—something snarling, something with fucking _terrifying_ teeth, holy shit, holy _shit_ what the fuck is _that—_

“Tell me who you are and why you are here and I won't rip out your throat,” says the creature now holding him with both hands, nearly lifting him from the ground. Byeongkwan is small, but not small enough for a guy that size to be lifting him so easily. Holy shit. Holy shit, he's about to die for real.

“By—” holy fuck he's so breathless, what is air? “Byeongkwan Kim, I'm—I'm here on the orders of Junhee Park—”

“And why should I care who that is,” the thing holding him up asks. It has white hair. White hair, pale skin, eyes the color of coffee with too much cream, though they are shot through with savage silver. Byeongkwan recognizes the color from when Sehyoon is angry—is deadly furious and aggressive. Perhaps a little afraid. Is this creature _afraid_ of him?

“Put him down, Hongjoong,” comes a somewhat musical voice. “One lone hunter under Junhee's command is in no way a threat.”

Those frightening eyes squint, but Byeongkwan is lowered to the floor and immediately staggers back, hitting the wall beside the door. The shop, now that he can see it, is a wreck. There are... Several people here, actually, though Byeongkwan only recognizes Jaehwan and Hongbin Lee. Jaehwan is beside the counter, sitting down on a couch with Hongbin half in his lap. Hongbin is looking at Byeongkwan like he's about to try and kill him which, given his more recent experiences, is a completely justified assumption to make.

“Why are you here,” Jaehwan asks. “Do be honest. I'd hate for you to get your throat torn out for daring to lie to me in my own House.”

Byeongkwan gains nothing from lying.

“Junhee asked me to come,” he says, standing up a little straighter. “We... When we heard about New York. He wanted me to come and see... If Hongbin was all right. He wants me to stay here as... I guess, as informed party should they come south.”

“They. You mean the mob of murdering bastards who enslaved and used the very people they usually capture, mutilate and murder? The self-proclaimed _hunters?_ ”

“...Yes,” Byeongkwan says. Honesty is the best policy with magical beings. “That's right. They... Junhee didn't give me the details, that's above my pay grade, but he said that we're—me, Junhee's people—are making moves to do what we can to stop them. Junhee only has so much power, but he's working on that. The attack on New York was disgusting, unjustifiable. It's up to us to... Take care. Of the ones that did it.”

“To kill them, you mean.” Hongbin sits up and looks at Byeongkwan. His eyes are an unsettling shade of yellow-gold and he seems to look _through_ Byeongkwan, completely. “You're moving to kill them.”

“If that's what it takes.”

“So willing to throw yourself into danger,” Hongbin half-smiles, his skin pale and his hair matted with sleep. “You're going to get yourself killed. Then what will your little vampire out in the sun do?”

“Leave him out of this.” Byeongkwan refuses to let his voice shake.

Hongbin's eyes roll toward the door. “He'll come in eventually. His ancestor is here, after all.”

“What?”

Hongbin laughs, looking absolutely insane. “The first of his kind! His ancestor surely you did not think him the progeny of any usual creature. They are not _born_ that way, Byeongkwan Kim you _know_ this. They are made to be that way and yet your precious Sehyoon has never felt humanity? Never been touched by it? How could that be? The dead cannot birth.”

“What does it matter,” Byeongkwan snaps. “He is what he is and I don't—”

“Care?” Hongbin whispers, voice so sweet as he leans forward, eyes still on Byeongkwan, unblinking. “You don't care, Byeongkwan Kim? How dare you lie. How dare you lie when that mutilated abomination outside cares for you so much that he is about to do something very, very foolish, and most likely die for it?”

“What—”

“Byeongkwan Kim, let me ask you something,” Hongbin says, expression suddenly flat and deadly. “Do you understand the saying, give a man enough rope, and he will hang himself?” Byeongkwan's heart is squeezed in a cold fist.

“Time passes very differently here, Byeongkwan Kim,” Hongbin whispers, then starts laughing. “You best save your pet before his attempts to save _you_ are aborted by his death.”

Byeongkwan throws the door open and runs outside. The van is still there, but Sehyoon is screaming, there are people trying to get into it, people who—

Hunters.

Byeongkwan's blood is on fire as he reaches for his guns. The one that sprays shrapnel at high velocity, and the other that shoots hollow-points. They aren't blessed, but they don't need to be blessed for them to kill humans.

In the broad daylight of New Orleans, in the sound of shattering glass Byeongkwan shoots and kills four hunters wearing what he knows to be the symbol of the northern 'clan'. The fanatics that tried to destroy New York. They're already here. Their bodies crumple to the pavement and Byeongkwan steps on them in his rush to climb into the van and slam the door closed.

Everything smells like burnt flesh. Sehyoon has stopped screaming.

“Yoon?” Byeongkwan asks, moving, yanking the second seat as far forward as he can get it to go. “Yoonie, Sehyoon—” Sehyoon is laying on the floor of the back seat, half-bent at an unnatural angle. He is violently shaking, and he's—oh god, he's burned.

Sehyoon's shirt and jacket have been ripped away, and he is viciously burned from belly to hairline on one side, how could—how—

The glass, Byeongkwan thinks frantically as he tries to get on Sehyoon's uninjured side to try and—and what? He is shaking, violently—there is frothy blood on his lips, down his chin. Some of his hair has been ripped out where it hasn't been burned off completely. The glass he'd heard was a mirror, they couldn't get Sehyoon out of the van and thus had done this instead—redirected the sunlight directly at him—

“Sehyoon,” Byeongkwan whispers, because it isn't supposed to be like this. Sehyoon isn't supposed to die before him, Sehyoon isn't supposed to be gone—

_give a man enough rope, and he will hang himself._

Sehyoon wasn't supposed to _die_ keeping Byeongkwan's location a secret—he should have just told them, they probably would have killed him anyway but at least it would have been fast—faster than this horrible bruising, splotches and tendrils of black moving from the burn to attempt to cover Sehyoon's entire body. It might have been ugly, but it wouldn't be this. It wouldn't be Sehyoon's violent seizing coming to an abrupt halt. It wouldn't be his head dropping to the side, bubbled blood on his lips and cheek.

“Sehyoon, Sehyoon come on, come on, you need to drink, Sehyoon _get up—_ ” Byeongkwan cuts an 'X' across his wrist with his own trench knife. It's so sharp it almost doesn't hurt. But the blood falling onto Sehyoon's mouth does nothing, the blood passing between his lips doesn't even make him twitch his eyes open.

“Sehyoon you can't do this to me,” Byeongkwan says, forcing his wrist between Sehyoon's teeth, still bleeding. “You can't do this, Sehyoon you absolute _fucking idiot,_ wake _up,_ wake up or so help me I'll make you wish I'd left you in that mausoleum—Sehyoon, Sehyoon _please—_ ”

When Byeongkwan met Sehyoon, what feels like an eternity ago though it's really only been five years, Sehyoon had been feeding on suiciders at a popular jumping point near the coast. As long as the blood was still warm, he could feed, and those that didn't die in the fall, well. Sehyoon finished off their terribly broken bodies by taking away what blood was left in them. Byeongkwan met Sehyoon because he'd tracked him all the way back to a mausoleum—how fucking typical of an undead monster, he'd thought then—but what he'd found wasn't the merciless killer he'd been expecting. Just a skinny, pathetic ghost hiding in one of the coffin-holes. He hadn't screamed when Byeongkwan pulled him out, he hadn't cried when Byeongkwan put the tip of the crossbow against his forehead. Just... He'd looked so confused, and afraid. Definitely not the ghoul or blood-savage he'd been expecting. A blood-savage, Byeongkwan could have killed—a vampire so deeply into the blood-high that it destroyed their ability to reason or function. A ghoul had been another possibility—sometimes they drank the blood and skipped on the flesh, if they weren't too hungry, but they usually took the bodies away with them back to a nest.

No, Sehyoon had just been a skinny, frightened slip of a vampire, looking at Byeongkwan like he didn't understand what he'd done wrong, why it was that Byeongkwan had hurt him, why Byeongkwan was going to kill him. He was just a half-starved, pitiful mess, and... And Byeongkwan hadn't been able to kill him. Instead he folded Sehyoon into his heart, and eventually into his bed. When Sehyoon had refused to permanently stay in the company of others of his kind, Byeongkwan decided to keep him. Byeongkwan taught him more human kinds of affection, taught him to do more than stare across a room when he wanted to give or take said affections. His blood and their closeness had taught Sehyoon language. Byeongkwan had gifted Sehyoon music, and the bright lights of a night in the city. The two of them are...

Byeongkwan can feel that he is crying, but... No sound is coming out. Sehyoon's teeth do not bite into his arm, his eyes do not open. He lays there, burned half to death, burned to death, to death, oh god, Sehyoon is _dead—_

“No,” Byeongkwan whispers, reaching down to pet what remains of Sehyoon's hair. “No, no no baby you can't—don't do this, don't do this to me, Yoonie please? This isn't funny. Yoonie. Sehyoon please.”

Sehyoon does not answer. Byeongkwan wonders if this is the pain he would have subjected Sehyoon to, if he'd died as Sehyoon so deeply feared. Is this how Sehyoon would have felt when he was given back Byeongkwan's body, assuming it was given back to him at all?

How cruel of him to have assumed that Sehyoon would have been fine after his death. How cruel he'd been to joke about Sehyoon finding someone else. As though there could _ever_ be someone else, as though...

The door to the van opens. Byeongkwan is half-over Sehyoon's body with his his cut hand holding his knife, raising it before the door even finishes sliding down the track but the hand that grabs his wrist is mercilessly strong and Byeongkwan—Byeongkwan is _weak._ He is human, and weak, and his lover is _dead._ His knife drops to the floor, harmless.

“ _Leave,_ ” he hisses, hateful, begging, let him be alone, god, let him be alone with Sehyoon just one more time, to kiss what remains of his beautiful, smiling lips, his soft eyelashes, his gentle cheeks and hairline.

“Your blood is not strong enough to bring him back,” says the bone-white vampire with wild eyes. “Mine is.”

“Leave him alone,” Byeongkwan half-chokes, braced over Sehyoon's body with his weight on one hand, the other trapped by the bone-white vampire with the terrifying teeth. “Leave us alone—”

“He is running out of time, Byeongkwan Kim,” the vampire says. “Do you want him to live, or not.”

Byeongkwan nods, helpless, gasping for air, refusing to sob, refusing to show how _weak—_

Byeongkwan watches the vampires bite its own wrist. He watches through tears as its wrist is shoved between Sehyoon's small teeth and for a few heart-stopping seconds there is nothing. Nothing, nothing.

Then.

An explosion of movement, Sehyoon moving so hard and so fast that it throws Byeongkwan to the other side of the van. Sehyoon grabs at the bone-white vampire's arm with his savagely clawed hands. Beongkwan hasn't seen those claws outside of a fight for ages. The bone-white vampire has his other hand fisted in what remains of Sehyoon's hair, keeping him pulled back, not allowing him to drink endlessly and out of control, as Sehyoon has always feared he will do to Byeongkwan. His eyes are bright silver, so different from his normal dark brown.

“Shh, yes, shh... Easy, slow down, you're going to hurt yourself. That's it. That's it, boy, that's... Yes. Yes, like that, shh.”

Byeongkwan watches as Sehyoon's vicious bite gentles, gentles further and further until he is just tenderly sucking like a sated infant, aimlessly mouthing at a nipple just to feel the motion to comfort itself. Byeongkwan watches Sehyoon's burned skin reform. He watches Sehyoon's eyeball reappear in its socket before it is covered by soft, pale skin. He watches Sehyoon's hair grow in, a mix of black and white. Byeongkwan watches Sehyoon's beautiful brown eyes open and look up at the bone-white vampire, sitting on the edge of the van, half in the sun as he coos like a mother.

“There you go, that's good. That's very good. Let me put this on you. Yes, that's right, around your neck. Yes, you go have to let go, boy, just for a moment.” Sehyoon pulls back only long enough for the charm and chain to fall down around his neck. It seems to dissolve into his skin. The bone-white vampire looks at Byeongkwan and nods at the other door of the van, makes a motion for him to come around to the other side. Byeongkwan opens it and climbs out, walking around like he is in a daze. The bodies are gone, he realizes when he comes around the corner. He must have been in the van longer than he thought, too focused on Sehyoon to—

“Yes, he's familiar, isn't he. That's because he's yours, boy. Yes, yes, he _is_ waiting for you. Come now. Don't be afraid.” Sehyoon looks afraid. Sitting in the van, sitting just beyond the line where the sun is cut by the roof. “Your beloved is waiting for you,” the bone-white vampire says. “He waits for you. Go to him.”

Sehyoon stares at Byeongkwan, then looks back at the bone-white vampire.

“I promise,” he says, a strange little smile on his face, almost nostalgia. “I promise it won't hurt you. Look. Look how he reaches for you.”

Byeongkwan is reaching. With one shaking hand, he is reaching. If Sehyoon dies he'll kill himself, there are three more bullets in his handgun. He'll kill himself right here in the street so their bodies bend together one more time, though this time as corpses.

Sehyoon reaches out.

The sun hits his hand, and does not burn him. Byeongkwan is amazed, but then he doesn't have time to be amazed. He doesn't have the mind for it either. Not when Sehyoon is hugging him so desperately, clawing at his back, kissing at his neck, his shoulder, his hair and face, over and over and over. Not with Sehyoon smearing blood all over both of them as he weeps, unashamed of his emotions. Byeonkwan had tried to teach him control, but not shame. Never had he allowed Sehyoon to feel humiliation for how he was expressing his heart.

“Darling, oh sweetheart, my star—” Sehyoon has never used those words directly with Byeongkwan. They make Byeongkwan's heart shake and loosen, they make his ribs ache with the escape of his heart to make room for nothing else but Sehyoon. Sehyoon, tucked safe behind Byeongkwan's bones, with him always. “Beloved, my love, Byeongkwan—”

Byeongkwan can do nothing but stand there and try to return Sehyoon's kisses through his tears. Byeongkwan fists his fingers in what remains of Sehyoon's shirt, falls back to a wall and holds Sehyoon as close to him as he can while they both have clothes on, and cries.

~

Hongjoong had felt them approaching, whoever they were. He'd felt them coming, though the one who walked through the door wasn't the one he was expecting. Though perhaps the other had too much of the vampire in him to withstand the sunlight. He felt the other one's pain also, as Hongbin had tortured the short boy with dark hair until he ran from them. Hongjoong found it cruel but Hongbin had just laughed, shrieking like a hyena.

 _You better go get him,_ he'd said between gasps for air. _He's going to die, your progeny. Your legacy left behind._

Hongjoong had gone out, but time passed just a little more quickly outside the shop. There were four dead men on the ground and the door to the van was closed, but that didn't matter. The sounds of fear, panic and mourning escaping through it as though the metal and glass were not there at all. Hongjoong had yanked the door open and the boy, Byeongkwan, had been weeping, touching the dying vampire so tenderly, his pathetic human blood not enough to bring the vampire back from death--but the trench knife in his hand would have been buried in Hongjoong's skull had he not been prepared for the movement.

_Your blood is not strong enough to bring him back, Mine is._

_Leave him alone,_ the human had cried, trying to protect the vampire's body with his own. Such loyalty, Hongjoong had thought. For something that could kill him so easily, for something that could rend his human form in seconds. _Leave us alone_ — the boy had begged.

_He is running out of time, Byeongkwan Kim. Do you want him to live, or not._

Of course he'd known the boy would nod, and of course he'd known what would happen when he allowed the vampire to bite him. Voracious feeding, though nowhere near as terrible as Hongjoong had been. On the cusp of death regardless, the vampire had clawed his way back with all the power he had. All the love, and all the strength that love gave him. And there was so much of it, Hongjoong could feel it the same way he felt all of his own companions. Kim Sehyoon's love was limitless, endless, eternal. Dangerous to him for being so, but still.

Hongjoong had comforted him, soothed his agitated nerves. Had dropped the spell Jaehwan had thrown at him about Sehyoon's throat, had urged him out into the sun where his trembling human beloved waited for him.

Now, as he witnesses them clinging desperately to one another, each of them terrified and each for similar reasons, he feels something like hope. It is small and soft in his chest.

“Inside,” he urges them, closing the door to the van and touching their arms where they touch each other, each of them equal with an arm around the neck and an arm around the ribs. “Come, inside. We don't need to be seen any more than we already have.”

The littler one, the human, Byeongkwan, nods and the two of them—connected at the hip and holding hands though they each feel the other will float up and away—follow him inside. Jaehwan has taken Hongbin upstairs, so he doesn't upset anyone any further. Jaehwan had explained, a few days ago when this first happened, that Hongbin has regressed _years,_ the development and refinement of his curse all gone in the face of whatever had happened, whatever had been done to him—and it came though as it chose without Hongbin's consent, spilling through his teeth, turning him mad. Hongbin has laughed very much, since Hongjoong met him. He has laughed almost as much as he has cried.

Byeongkwan and Sehyoon collapse into the chair closest to the door. They are so tangled that Hongjoong almost can't tell where either of them begin or end, and they do not seem to care about the rest of Yeosang and Yunho's brood, all of them attempting to clean up the mess of Jaehwan's shop, though it's been something of a task. There are some very dangerous things in here.

 _You better go get him._ _He's going to die, your progeny. Your legacy left behind._

Hongjoong knew that he couldn't—or at least, thought that he couldn't—produce children. It had never happened while he was in his betrayers harem, and he'd fucked many women and eunuchs there. Then again, he'd... Never been around long enough for them to have given birth. Many of the women knew the herbs to take to abort children; all of them used such things. There was...

Unless one of them had... been like him. A Deathless. Deathless could bear children, though many of them did not, Hongjoong is sure—simply because it would be too painful to watch them grow up, then old, then die without you, knowing you would never see them again, knowing you would never be able to join them in the afterlife. If that had happened...

He could ask Hongbin. But he does not wish to confront the mad thing Jaehwan has left upstairs. Even Jaehwan cannot be in his presence for too long. It pains him, he'd whispered, pushing his hands over his face as Yunho tried to comfort him. _I never wanted to see him like this again. Gon—... Gongchan was always the one to soothe and heal him, I... Never had the fortitude to withstand him long enough to do anything. I was weak. This all happened because I was_ _ **weak.**_

Hongjoong isn't sure that's true. Jaehwan had given in to the fear and truthfully there are none who could blame him. It was not weak to preserve yourself. It was not weak to wish to protect your being when it is threatened, even by your loved ones. It is why there is still a talisman hanging over his own bedroom door; because Hongjoong is still a threat, and his loved ones wish to protect themselves.

Even Sehyoon, sitting in that chair and holding Byeongkwan close to him, is a threat to his lover. But it looks as though Byeongkwan takes no precautions. He is not wearing any charms, he is not covered with a spell. Just his human body, just the faith that Sehyoon will do nothing to him. The trust that takes—the sheer and unbridled faith, the absolute idiocy—is breathtaking.

Hongjoong had been able to feel Sehyoon, when Sehyoon took of his blood. Sehyoon, born in a lightless pit, fed by his 'father,' who raised him until he could scavenge for food on his own. Then he'd left Sehyoon in the dark, literally and figuratively. Sehyoon had been left on his own. Sehyoon, finding the dying and the depraved and the terminally sick to feed from. Figuring out what he could and couldn't have by simply biting and sometimes throwing up after. Sehyoon finding the suicide fall. Mercy-killing those who could never, even with modern technology, be saved.

Sehyoon, tracked to his safe lair by a young hunter who had been instructed to kill whatever ghoul or blood-savage vampire he found there. Instead had found Sehyoon: quiet, desperate, confused and frightened Sehyoon, whose only interactions with humans had been bites. A quiet, dark-haired vampire who had taken three long, careful pulls of blood the first time Byeongkwan had offered of himself, because the blood of the dying could kill Sehyoon, if he wasn't careful. The blood the long dead would poison a vampire to death.

Hongjoong had felt the burst of warmth and color and happiness with every vision of Byeongkwan—though as their time together went on, there had started to be fear. Deep spears of agony. A weeping of endless tears while Byeongkwan was gone or sleeping because Sehyoon knew and understood that Byeongkwan, as brave and strong and beautiful as he was, was still a mortal. Could still die. Byeongkwan hunted mostly in the daylight, when the creatures he took care of—the wild and feral things, never anything that was aware of itself—were most vulnerable.

Learning, quietly and suddenly and fearfully, that what he was feeling was called _love_ and it was the most painful thing for a vampire to endure. That many of them did not survive it, the deaths of their human lovers. Many of them wrote only of their love stories before killing themselves, hoping that the manuscripts would be found by someone they would help.

Sehyoon had started writing his story in the previous year. Kept it hidden and close for fear that Byeongkwan may find it. Hongjoong wonders what it says. Wonders if Sehyoon includes all the small details he would include about his own lovers. The way Yeosang's dark hair looks lighter in the midday sunshine, the way San's eyes wrinkle up when he smiles. Wooyoung's loud and shameless laugh, The tender way Jongho holds hands and kisses those hands to show comfort and love. Yunho's attempts to make blood wine or blood tea or blood juice to see if any of them can ingest it. Mingi, the sweet boy, who always attempts to ingest them, and is always sick afterward. How Seonghwa hides behind his mask of propriety because even after all this time, he is afraid to let anyone, including Yunho, too close to the tender parts of his heart.

Hongjoong pities the vampire in that chair, tangled up with that human. That human will die. That human will die, and Sehyoon will be left alone in a world Byeongkwan had shown to him, everything he looks at, touches and smells will be a memory intertwined with Byeongkwan. He will be in agony all the time and, eventually or soon after, he will remove that charm and step into the sun in the hopes that he will be together with Byeongkwan.

Sometimes, love is so cruel.

Hongjoong walks towards his family, most of them at the other side of the room, and embraces the one closest to him. Jongho. He hugs him tightly, smooths his hair and says nothing when Jongho asks what's wrong because he cannot hope to describe it. He hopes that Jongho never feels it. That Yeosang and Yunho stay with them always; he hopes that as time moves ever onward, they will stay the same.

It is the inevitability of that pain that would have made it a mercy to let Sehyoon die out there. Byeongkwan only has a human lifetime, but Sehyoon has forever. It would have been more merciful to let him die. But Hongjoong had looked at Byeongkwan's tears, heard his pounding heartbeat and frantic whispers even through the car door, and hadn't been able to give that mercy.

 _Let them have a few more years,_ he thinks, embracing Jongho more tightly. _Just a bit more precious time to love one another, before fate takes one of them away_.

Love is so cruel. Merciless, and beautiful, and cruel.

**Author's Note:**

> yay they're all in the same place now! kind of!


End file.
